Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Bicycle Friendly: Commuting with a Congressman : NPR
Bicycle Friendly: Commuting with a Congressman : NPR
Labels: bicycle, climate change, NPR, zero carbon emissions
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Back when we were young
Click for an interactive map of a Ride around Lake Mitchell
Back home for a family reunion. This lake was the center of lots of good times from way back when. There are so many nice houses there now...
Labels: Bicycle Tourist Loop, birds, Mitchell SD
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Beer Midge EE
A ride around the lake in Bemidji was a nice ride although I swear it must have been designed by a NASCAR driver on a Snowmobile.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
t r u t h o u t | Fury at Soaring Fuel Costs Spreads Around the World
t r u t h o u t | Fury at Soaring Fuel Costs Spreads Around the World
I don't usually post this kind of thing on this blog but it is the kind of event that exemplifies how important personal choices can be.
We attended an informational meeting about forming a local food coop this evening which is another part of the slow movement. Slow is a 4 letter word to those who still believe in an economic system that depends upon overconsumption.
Since this blog is about slowing down, spending less, and taking back your life, I think a world protest against high oil prices is a coming to Jesus event about the unsustainability of our current culture belongs here. It is part of the philosophical basis for making a choice to do more with less.
I don't usually post this kind of thing on this blog but it is the kind of event that exemplifies how important personal choices can be.
We attended an informational meeting about forming a local food coop this evening which is another part of the slow movement. Slow is a 4 letter word to those who still believe in an economic system that depends upon overconsumption.
Since this blog is about slowing down, spending less, and taking back your life, I think a world protest against high oil prices is a coming to Jesus event about the unsustainability of our current culture belongs here. It is part of the philosophical basis for making a choice to do more with less.
Nice Photos Review of Paris
Paris 2008
I found this on Webshots through a tag search of the pics from our Take a walk in the Latin Quarter, May 28 post. They were there in April.
It reminded me that I need to work on the other walks we took while we were there.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
We been road trippin
Grampa, Gramma and Saela and Martin on a trip to the Fulsaas Farm. Two new friends, Smoke and Makenzie
Careful these pic might be huge.
Click on 'em and find out
Click on 'em and find out
Monday, June 02, 2008
Berlin - where proximity fits bicycle culture
Imagine calling a friend in a city of 5 million people and they say, "I am at work and have bicycle. I will meet you for dinner in your neighborhood."
Everywhere you go bicycle lanes are filled with people of ages and all kinds of bicycles traveling at a broad range of speed, everyone less than 20mph. Shops and gathering spots for food & drink are no more than a few 100 meters apart
That's the capital of Germany. When I ran across this post quoting Paul Krugman (NYT) on the Carfree USA Blog comparing Atlanta and Berlin, I was reminded of the great people friendly qualities of this large German capital. As the Krugman quote says,
Cars are like cancer once they move into the vital arteries of a city, take over and kill its ability to serve the needs of the organisms that it was designed to serve in the first place. The big difference is Berlin is a modern city and Atlanta is well, hooked on phony logic, just like most US cities who were deluded into believing "cheap oil meant community doesn't matter."
Think about that, 5M people, going to work on a bicycle. That implies a great deal about how a city manages its people moving responsibilities. I don't know what Atlanta might be doing but the Twin Cites of Minneapolis and St. Paul Minnesota have made some great strides in the past few years. The Transit for Liveable Communities is the kind of comprehensive set of alternatives to driving that is needed to counteract the diabolical ills of an automobile culture: 3 acre lots, McMansions, SUVs. entertainment news, obesity, strip malls, 2 hour commutes, need we go on?
We visited many carfree areas in European cities and as we traveled through rural Germany by train, everywhere we looked there were people on bicycles riding down country lanes or stopped at places along the trails and paths to enjoy the outdoors.
What a reminder of how so many of us have lost the capacity to enjoy what we have in our own local areas. In a word, proximity.
Proximity is what makes where you live special. What is it that you don't yet know about your place? When we value where we live, we make it better. The slower we go the better it gets. The better it gets, the more we want to make it a better place to live and discover new ways to enjoy what it has to offer.
That is how we discovered birds. Click here and look at the posts below to see what I mean.
Everywhere you go bicycle lanes are filled with people of ages and all kinds of bicycles traveling at a broad range of speed, everyone less than 20mph. Shops and gathering spots for food & drink are no more than a few 100 meters apart
That's the capital of Germany. When I ran across this post quoting Paul Krugman (NYT) on the Carfree USA Blog comparing Atlanta and Berlin, I was reminded of the great people friendly qualities of this large German capital. As the Krugman quote says,
Greater Atlanta has roughly the same population as Greater Berlin — but Berlin is a city of trains, buses and bikes, while Atlanta is a city of cars, cars and cars.
Cars are like cancer once they move into the vital arteries of a city, take over and kill its ability to serve the needs of the organisms that it was designed to serve in the first place. The big difference is Berlin is a modern city and Atlanta is well, hooked on phony logic, just like most US cities who were deluded into believing "cheap oil meant community doesn't matter."
Think about that, 5M people, going to work on a bicycle. That implies a great deal about how a city manages its people moving responsibilities. I don't know what Atlanta might be doing but the Twin Cites of Minneapolis and St. Paul Minnesota have made some great strides in the past few years. The Transit for Liveable Communities is the kind of comprehensive set of alternatives to driving that is needed to counteract the diabolical ills of an automobile culture: 3 acre lots, McMansions, SUVs. entertainment news, obesity, strip malls, 2 hour commutes, need we go on?
We visited many carfree areas in European cities and as we traveled through rural Germany by train, everywhere we looked there were people on bicycles riding down country lanes or stopped at places along the trails and paths to enjoy the outdoors.
What a reminder of how so many of us have lost the capacity to enjoy what we have in our own local areas. In a word, proximity.
Proximity is what makes where you live special. What is it that you don't yet know about your place? When we value where we live, we make it better. The slower we go the better it gets. The better it gets, the more we want to make it a better place to live and discover new ways to enjoy what it has to offer.
That is how we discovered birds. Click here and look at the posts below to see what I mean.
Labels: alternatives, bicycle, birds, travel
